Miss Suffern, at the suggestion, stood up also, an agitated hand among her bugles. “I do wish I could persuade you to stay up here this evening. I’m sure Leila’d be happier if you would. Really, you’re much too tired to come down.”
“What nonsense, Susy!” Mrs. Lidcote spoke with a sudden sharpness, her hand stretched to the bell. “When do we dine? At half-past eight? Then I must really send you packing. At my age it takes time to dress.”
Miss Suffern, thus projected toward the threshold, lingered there to repeat: “Leila’ll never forgive herself if you make an effort you’re not up to.” But Mrs. Lidcote smiled on her without answering, and the icy lightwave propelled her through the door.
V
Mrs. Lidcote, though she had made the gesture of ringing for her maid, had not done so.
When the door closed, she continued to stand motionless in the middle of her soft spacious room. The fire which had been kindled at twilight danced on the brightness of silver and mirrors and sober gilding; and the sofa toward which she had been urged by Miss Suffern heaped up its cushions in inviting proximity to a table laden with new books and papers. She could not recall having ever been more luxuriously housed, or having ever had so strange a sense of being out alone, under the night, in a windbeaten plain. She sat down by the fire and thought.
A knock on the door made her lift her head, and she saw her daughter on the threshold. The intricate ordering of Leila’s fair hair and the flying folds of her dressinggown showed that she had interrupted her dressing to hasten to her mother; but once in the room she paused a moment, smiling uncertainly, as though she had forgotten the object of her haste.
Mrs. Lidcote rose to her feet. “Time to dress, dearest? Don’t scold! I shan’t be late.”
“To dress?” Leila stood before her with a puzzled look. “Why, I thought, dear—I mean, I hoped you’d decided just to stay here quietly and rest.”
Her mother smiled. “But I’ve been resting all the afternoon!”